Élie GUINZBOURG (1859-1939) - Lot 91

Élie GUINZBOURG (1859-1939) Portrait of Leon Tolstoi, 1891. Sculpted plaster. Signed, dated 1891 and located in Yasnaia Poliana. 62 x 52 x 25 cm. Provenance: Elie (Ilia) Halperine-Kaminsky (1858-1936), then by descent, France. ГИНЦБУРГ Илья (1859-1939) Портрет Льва Толстого, 1891 Гипс Подпись, дата 1891 и место Ясная Поляна 62 х 52 x 25 см. Провенанс: Илья Данилович Гальперин-Каминский (1858- 1936), далее в семье. Франция. In 1891, the already-recognized young sculptor Ilia Guinzburg (Elie Guinzburg) paid his first visit to the writer Leo Tolstoy in Yasnaia Poliana with the idea of creating a portrait of the famous man of letters. At the time, the author of War and Peace was 62 years old and already one of the great figures of Russian literature, while his philosophical ideas resonated far beyond the country's borders. Tolstoy was accustomed to receiving guests and often welcomed artists into his home. But according to his own recollections, he didn't appreciate sculptors and rarely agreed to pose. Ilia Guinzburg was the first professional sculptor to whom the doors of the Yasnaia Poliana house were opened. Like many others, I probably arrived at Yasnaia Poliana for the first time with a preconceived idea, a ready-made judgment of how a wise philosopher should behave, how the genius who had written War and Peace and The Kingdom of God is Within You should live. Tolstoy, it seemed to me, had to be gloomy, always serious, thoughtful, somewhat distracted, severe on himself and even more severe on others," wrote Ginzburg in his memoirs. It seemed to him that he too had to be very serious in Tolstoy's presence. At Yasnaia Poliana, however, he was greeted by an extremely charming and receptive host, a truly multifaceted personality. Guests, during their stay in his house, almost became members of the family. At the same time, the painter Ilya Répine (a friend of Guinzburg's in St. Petersburg) was also a guest in Tolstoy's home, which greatly facilitated the early stages of the work, as Tolstoy posed very little and the artists had to follow him constantly. and the artists had to follow him constantly, trying to capture his impressions and emotions on the fly. Guinzburg loved to portray his subjects in the midst of their creation, and had achieved great mastery in restoring the likeness and psychological expressiveness of the portrait. But even he, for all his experience in this field, felt constrained, being obliged to follow Tolstoy around all day. A celebrated master of small-scale sculpture, Guinzburg had not originally planned to create large sculptural portraits of Tolstoy, but things didn't work out as planned: The sessions took place on a large balcony, in the afternoon, after lunch. I started a very large bust, and its dimensions embarrassed everyone. But Répine told me: "Don't change anything, the size is perfect; the bust of Leon Nikolayevich must remain large. The sculptor's stay in Yasnaia Poliana in 1891 gave rise to the famous statuette Tolstoy at work, while the bust was slightly reworked and cast in bronze in a slightly smaller format (L.N. Tolstoy Museum, Moscow). The original bust was given to the writer as a token of friendship and remained in Yasnaia Poliana, where it was later presented by Tolstoy himself to his friend and translator of his novels into French, Elie (Ilia) Halperine-Kaminsky, during one of his visits to the writer's home. the writer's home. Since then, the auctioned bust has remained in the Halperine-Kaminsky family and has never been exhibited to the public. Ilia Guinzburg visited Yasnaia Poliana a good dozen times and created Tolstoy's most famous sculptural portraits (Leo Tolstoy with a book, etc.), including large-scale ones. The sculptor became a true friend of the writer. After Tolstoy's death, he played an active part in the creation of the Tolstoy Museum and, in 1928, donated numerous works to it. Elie (Ilia) Danilovich Halperine-Kaminsky (1858-1936) was the leading translator of L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, I.S. Turgenev and other famous writers. After studying in Odessa and Sevastopol, Halperine-Kaminsky moved to Paris in 1880, where he enjoyed a brilliant career as a writer and translator, winning numerous awards (Prix Lenglois in 1923, Légion d'Honneur in 1927). A talented translator of Russian literature, he is the author of brilliant editions of A.S. Pushkin, N.A. Nekrasov, M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin, I.A. Gonchar and others.